Adobe and Macromedia Merges

Now this I never saw coming. It might be the biggest news yet for the graphic and web industry. If I remember it was a few years ago when these two were in each other’s necks sueing, for patent violations. That’s why I never expected this merger. Anyways, I think they’re a match made in heaven since Adobe’s specialty is largely on Print and and Macromedia dominates the Web market. Their merger would benefit both parties since they have different specialties, and their combined technologies would benefit us users since they would be delivering a much better softwares for us.

Now the question is, “Why now?”. We all know Macromedia is doing good in the Web industry right now especially with their SWF format. Only speculation though, I think they are somehow threatened on the future of Flash, with the growing popularity and the “web standards industry” pushing the more flexible “SVG” (scalable vector graphics). SVG has been creepping under Flash for some time now, but since more people are trying to push the format, especially since it’s compatible to Web Standards XHTML, it’s gaining a lot of ground. Browsers like Opera and Firefox will be including SVG support on their upcoming major release, while then, people would have to go to adobe to download their Adove SVG plug-in. In a few years, SVG could be the next big thing, like how flash is a few years back then. Could Macromedia foresaw this coming and decided to go with the motto “If you can’t beat them, join them”, while they are at their peak? No wonder they didn’t issue a new release of the Studio MX suite as they do every year.

What ever this merger holds, I hope it would benefit us users. Now let’s see what more surprises they hold.

A Travel Photographer and Writer who has contributed to several local and international inflight publications like Mabuhay, Cebu Pacific Smile and Singapore Airline SilverKris. His blog Ironwulf.net has received several accolades including Philippine Blog Awards Best Travel Blog 2008 and Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Best Travel Blog 2009 and recently a finalist for Globe Tattoo 2013 Best Photoblog.